


The Ineffable Husbands go on a family trip and self-indulgent things happen because I have no self-control

by AliceCarroll



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Family Trip, Fluff, Humour, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), but stupid angst, dorks being dorks, some angst at times
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-13 03:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceCarroll/pseuds/AliceCarroll
Summary: After the almost-Armageddon, Aziraphale and Crowley decide to take Adam and Dog on a trip to keep an eye on him in case Hell or Heaven try to do something to him since they are salty.





	1. Because what starts off as a one shot can become a 20.000-words fic. It’s happened before and will happen again. Amen.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [My Bestie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=My+Bestie).

> Crowley, be kind to me when I go to Hell for this.

“I am telling you, dear, you should have turned right two miles ago,” Aziraphale told Crowley in the calmest manner he would manage, hiding his annoyance behind a polite façade. As if this didn’t made Crowley more upset than plain yelling.

And, oh, Aziraphale _was_ annoyed. He had rolled his eyes at least twice in three hours and let out short, exasperated sighs ever since Crowley lost track of where they were going to. Well, but it was perfectly justified, of course. After all, they weren’t travelling on their own, but with little, dear Adam. They had decided to take the child away in a short holiday until things cooled down both in Heaven and Hell, for since they had lost the chance for battle and had been unable to punish those responsible for this, they had been rather irritable and they feared something should come upon the kid as he was just trying to live a normal life.

Thus, by some kind of odd miracle, two uncles neither of Adam’s parents could quite recall had shown up but five hours and a half before the moment when our narrative started at the Young’s household to take their favourite nephew away on a trip. This way, they would be able to leave mere mortals away from these matters in case something did happen while they were taking care of the former Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness.

“Oh, you know nothing of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on carrying the fu…”

“Crowley!”

“T-the… the funny! map with us instead of the gps!!”

“Oh, but maps are so much fun,” Aziraphale smiled, looking down at it in fondness. “And they help us bond much more than those talking machines.”

“Yeah, sure, we are bonding so much right now. Look at us, totally not wanting to go at each other’s throats!”

“Surely, you are the only one who feels that way,” the angel replied with a pout, looking back to the road. “Alright, if you’re going to get mad at me whenever _I_ try to guide and _you_ don’t follow my instructions, thus, getting lost, I just won’t talk at all.”

“Good, give that to me,” Crowley said, making Aziraphale let out an indignant gasp as he reached out for his map. He put it on the wheel and started looking down to it and up to the road.

“It’s upside down, dear.”

“Shut up.”

“Can we turn the music lower? I want to sleep,” Adam, who had been bored of the conversation since Aziraphale started naming all the restaurants of the small villages they were going to visit, asked. He wasn’t in the best of moods either, since he had been looking forwards to playing with his friends that Saturday at Anathema’s house: they had found out that she had at home plants which made you feel funny and wanted to give them a try. Of course, Anathema would have never allowed this, but Adam didn’t quite know that.

Crowley reached out for the volume and “Mother” by Prince started sounding at the highest volume. Adam covered his ears with his hands and Dog let out a whine and a growl, hiding between his master and the seat.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale let out and turned off the music, making the demon grunt. He reached out for the radio again, but when he turned it on, a ballad started playing.

“Tchaikovsky, really?” he whined. “He was an absolute douchebag!”

“And a genius, as most Russian artists,” Aziraphale smiled, proud of his choice and remembering those afternoons in Tolstoi’s summer house. Dog went back to leaning on Adam’s lap and let out a happy sigh, falling asleep easily.

“I can’t believe you performed a miracle just to change the music.”

“It takes a real one for you to have some classical music in your car,” he said, shifting on the seat. They continued in silence for the first time since they picked Adam up and the first drops of what would soon enough turn into a storm started falling down on them.

Aziraphale looked through the window, the green English fields succeeding one after the other. They were heading up north, for no one would ever suspect Southerners to go up, having stopped in Manchester already, and they had just crossed the border to Scotland. At least that was what Aziraphale had calculated, for they had spent more than five hours by car. Well, in that case those wouldn’t be the _English_ fields, but the Scottish. Which made him think of something.

“Was Brexit your idea?”

“Seriously, why Scotland?” Crowley asked at the same time. They both looked at each other politely and awkwardly as they tried to let the other talk first. Crowley was the first to reply. “The humans did it, as the most evil things.” He replied and Aziraphale nodded, sort of expecting the answer. He didn’t want to dwell more on the idea since he knew this could upset Crowley.

“Scotland is a beautiful land with amiable people and beautiful landscapes. Besides, who doesn’t like to wear some tartan,” he added with a smile. “And they sell the warmest wool jumpers and…”

“So you wanted to come to Scotland to indulge on the fashion,” Crowley said, not caring to hold back a smile. He knew it couldn’t be haggis. The angel was too refined to try sheep guts.

“Oh, well,” Aziraphale smiled shily. “That’s… well, there’s beautiful scenery, as I said, and I thought our little Adam would enjoy visiting it, as well as the rich mythology and legends of the place, of course.”

So he was also looking for new books for his library. Interesting.

“I see.”

“Would you have rather gone to another place?” he asked, interested.

“I would have rather gone south,” the demon replied. “Maybe Israel. Show the kid where everything started. Also… warmer,” he added in a thin voice and Aziraphale gave him a surprised and worried look.

“Oh, my, I forgot your cold blood. Don’t worry, dear, we’ll find appropriate clothing for you and Scottish houses are very well-conditioned for the weather!”

“I don’t want your… wool jumpers,” he frowned. “I’ll be perfectly fine with my leather jackets. Besides, cool weather is not a problem.”

“You can always crawl into my pocket.”

“I’m telling you it’s not a problem.”

“Of course not, dear.”

“You are being patronising.”

“I am not being patronising. I am never patronising, I…”

By that moment, the storm had become stronger. The rain fell against the car mercilessly, which, together with the darkness of the evening, made it impossible to see in the dark. Crowley took off his sunglasses to see better, although in the process of doing this, he didn’t notice the tree before him and loudly crashed against it.

“My car!!!”

“The child!!! Adam, are you alright?”

“What happened?” the kid asked, scared, as Dog whined.

“We can’t travel without gps in the night, God damn it!” Crowley got off the car to look at it. The damage was quite great and would take a great amount of power to fix it, which wasn’t convenient to use since he didn’t want to get the attention of the people below. Luckily enough, it hadn’t caught on fire like last time.

Aziraphale got off the car as well just to hear the demon yelling for all of them to help him move back the car. He helped Adam out, wrapping his jacket around him and dog, and Crowley started pushing the car until it was completely separated from that foul tree.

“What have I done to deserve this?”

“Crowley, we have to find a place to spend the night!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “We will freeze to death!”

“Because we couldn’t choose a warm destination,” he hissed.

At that moment, a light which seemed almost celestial made its way between the rain and darkness of the night, blinding Crowley and making Aziraphale and Adam squint their eyes. The figure of a young woman, who had become their saviour, started forming before their eyes, all wet from the rain, a shawl covering her shoulders, but also damp, and when she spoke, it seemed to them she did it so harmoniously they had never heard something like this, and they had never been happier of being asked such a question.

“Who are you?”


	2. Pretending I continue because I left a cliffhanger and not that I left a cliffhanger to continue later. God forgive my sins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having soo much fun writing this, so I hope you enjoy reading it too! ^^

Aziraphale felt just like home. He took the cup of tea he had been served by the lovely young lady that had so kindly taken them to her cottage in the middle of nowhere and sipped on it while admiring the books that piled everywhere around him. When he had first met their saviour, he had felt a sense of abandonment that had made him feel immense sadness, but that lovely house and her kind attitude compensated any negative feeling he may have had before. The shelves reached up to the ceiling, and all of them were covered by books of all kinds: poetry, prose, manuals, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Latin literature. Surely, mostly weren’t first editions as the ones he had kept in his neat book shop, but most of them were old or at least frequently used.

The books stood in two rows on the shelves, and on heaps on the tables, chairs, and some of them had to stand on the floor since their owner had run out of space for them. Aziraphale thought it was a pity that there wasn’t enough room for them, but it was better than not having the book, he guessed.

They had explained to their rescuer that they were two uncles and their nephew going on a family trip, but that they had got lost. She had offered them to stay the night at her humble home and try to head back to the Highlands in the morning. As much as they would have liked to refuse the kind offer, they were travelling with a child and couldn’t spend the night in a broken car. At least, those were Aziraphale’s reasons for accepting.

And now, their benefactor, whose name she had said was Elspeth, was making dinner for them. He smiled, lost in these thoughts, and started sipping tea once more in content, when he heard a screaming coming from the kitchen. He gave Crowley a look of surprise and small reprimand.

“It wasn’t I,” the demon raised his hands in innocence. Aziraphale gave him a look and stood up, and Crowley reluctantly followed him.

“Are you ok, my dear?” he asked, approaching the girl. A deep cut bled in the palm of her hand, drenching both the food and he kitchen in red. “Oh, my goodness,” he exclaimed, taking her hand.

“Aaaw, all the food got stained,” Elspeth pouted.

“Don’t worry about that now, dear. Crowley will take care of cleaning it,” he said, giving a significant look to his companion. He pointed at his face with an expression of surprise, and when Aziraphale nodded, he let out a grunt of annoyance. He hadn’t accepted to go there to be someone’s caretaker. “Now, we’ll take care of that wound, alright? Where is the first aid kit?”

“Aw, dinnae worry, this happens all the time,” Elspeth shrugged it off. “It’s in ma room, this way,” she said, and led the way to the stairs and up to her room.

“All the time, you say?” For a woman who had been wandering in the woods so late at night, being clumsy was quite odd. She also seemed quite observant, for she had guessed everyone’s preferred drinks and inferred Crowley’s picky tastes in food.

“Aye,” she raised her hand and her sleeve, showing him several cuts and wounds. “All over ma body. A tend to trip, things tend to fall on me,” she shrugged. “It’s as if A was cursed!”

“Cursed…” Aziraphale narrowed his eyes.

They entered Elspeth’s room and she opened the wardrobe to take the kit. Aziraphale sat on the bed next to her and with a polite “allow me, dear,” started to disinfect and dress the cut, which would miraculously heal quite fast indeed.

“Ye really ‘ve a good hand with this,” she said, surprised as her wound felt much better.

“Oh, well,” Aziraphale chuckled. “Let’s go down for now.”

When they arrived back to the living room, the table was set and the food ready. Aziraphale’s face light up in delight and he gave a thankful look to his friend, who pretended not to see it in his annoyance. Elspeth’s eyes widened in surprise and content and she walked towards Crowley with a brightened expression.

“Thank ye, Mr Crowley.”

“It was the ki…” he was starting to say, but saw that Adam had already fallen asleep under a comfortable wool blanket on the sofa. “The dog.”

“Oh. Thank ye, Dog,” she winked, opening her mouth to shut one of her eyes closed.

“Shall we…?” Aziraphale moved back the chair to help Elspeth before Crowley got more moody. With a gesture, he invited her to sit on it, which pleased her greatly since she hadn’t had but the company of her cats for so long and no one had been so gentleman-like towards her in that time.

Her cats weren’t really hers, though, as happens with most of these creatures. They were stray cats that make the best of the young lady’s amiable disposition towards them and go to her cottage every night around 9:30 and 10 pm to ask for dinner. They all had different names: Diana, Mars, Jupiter, Minerva, Venus, Cupid, Ceres, Neptune, Vulcan, and she was going to start using the Greek names for the new three that started meowing for dinner but the previous week, but she decided to call them Patches, Whiskers and Gregory instead.

“Thank ye,” she smiled to Aziraphale, who was charmed at how kind Elspeth’s expressions were. She looked as a real angel. Of course, that wasn’t possible, since he would have known if she was a real one and would have most likely been in great trouble, so he was also relieved that she only resembled one in kindness and goodwill.

Crowley dragged his chair backwards with a tired gesture and Aziraphale thought for a moment he would wake up Adam with his careless demeanours. He gave him a look, but Crowley only shrugged, lightly confused and indignant. Aziraphale smiled. He always enjoyed greatly these moments before humans were about to have dinner and they said their prayers. He could picture Elspeth already, piously clasping her hands together and thanking his Boss for the food and drink they were about to have (he even took a slight mischievous delight in imagining Crowley rolling his eyes at the action and his own satisfaction), but before this happened, the woman grabbed the fork and tried the salad.

“Hmmm… this is delicious,” she hummed. Bewildered, Aziraphale took the fork and started eating as well, ignoring the amused expression of Crowley, who looked at him with wide eyes and an open mouth boarding on a smile and pointed shamelessly between him and Elspeth. “Thanks for fixing my mess, Mr Crowley. A seriously wo…”

Nevertheless, before she could finish her sentence, the back legs of the chair broke, sending her backwards. She hit one of the heaps of books before either of the two supernatural entities could do anything to prevent it, and it resoundingly fell down on her. Adam shifted in his sleep, but he was dreaming so deeply that fortunately he didn’t get to wake up.

“Oh, my dear, are you alright?” Aziraphale asked her as Crowley and he helped her up.

“Am fine, am fine, A only have a wee scratch.”

Crowley rose an eyebrow. There was no way a fall like that would have left only a “wee scratch.” Her head must have been hurting like hell. Well, there was no blood, so he guessed it wouldn’t be that serious, and thus said nothing about it. No need to worry the angel about a clumsy mortal any further.

Although, come to think of it, he had noticed something weird when they had first entered the house. For the first time ever he felt in no danger whatsoever of being found there by Heaven. There was some kind of sense of hopelessness and abandonment around the mortal he had never felt before. All humans he had met ever since that son of a carpenter died on the cross seemed to be blessed by default. It was annoying. But she? She seemed completely on her own in this vast world!

He narrowed his eyes, staring at her as the angel helped her sit down on another chair and soothed her as she replied politely. There seemed to be nothing wrong with her. But what kind of eccentric psychopath would she actually be to have been abandoned by the Great Guy? That sense of loneliness felt rather familiar and…

Ooooh, wait, no, no way.

He was definitely and positively not feeling identified with a human. That’s bullshit. He’s a demon: wise, immortal and, let’s be honest, much more remarkable than the average; and she was a human child: clueless, mortal and… quite average.

“A’ve always ‘ve this bad luck,” the female human explained. “A dinnae ken how Am still alive, honestly. It’s a curse.”

“Have you tried praying?” Aziraphale asked with a smile as he sat down next to her.

“Of course A have,” she replied and took another bite of salad. Well, that made it even more weird. “What do ye think A was doing outside so late?”

“Praying? In the middle of the forest? At night time?” Crowley furrowed his eyebrows, quite interested on the turn of events. He took a chair and turned around to lean his arms on the back of it while looking at Elspeth.

“Aye, praying to the goddess of the Moon.”


	3. Used the same strategy as in last chapter. I’m not even original anymore.

“She’s a pagan!”

Elspeth had gone to sleep after a dinner which had, fortunately enough, gone by with no more incidents. She had insisted that Aziraphale and Crowley should take the bed while she slept in another sofa next to Adam’s, but obviously the angel and demon had insisted on her staying in her room. They had heard a loud thud upstairs, but had thought nothing of it as she had exclaimed “Am fine!”

“She is a pagan-ritual-performer, a-a venerator of the goddess of the moon, a wandering sheep lost in the depths of the darkest forest away from the light of the Lord!” Aziraphale rambled on as Crowley rubbed his temples, sitting on the chair as he started to get a hellish headache. He stood up and went closer to the angel, with an angry expression.

“Your Boss,” he hissed and was interrupted by an apologetic whine, from Aziraphale. “Your Boss has abandoned this… tooth-rotting sweet human being,” he continued, moving back to point at the top of the stairs from when Elspeth had disappeared, “for being a pagan?”

“W-well, there are many other pagan people who haven’t been abandoned by the Almighty, Crowley,” Aziraphale said making a sad and worried face as Crowley looked at the top of the stairs, his arms crossed on his chest. “Maybe she has an obscure and dark, unforgivable secret.” Crowley gave him a look at the word “unforgivable.” “Maybe she’s a psychopath,” he added with a hint of hope.

“Maybe she’s a psychopath,” Crowley mimicked him. “Are you hearing yourself?”

“W-well… we can’t know the ways of God, but there must be a good reason why she was abandoned. And maybe we can help!” he added, his face lighting up at the thought.

“Oh, no. No, no, no! This trip is supposed to be about us and Adam staying away from the picture until Heaven and Hell find something else to keep themselves entertained.”

“Oh, but, dear, don’t you want to help the child?” he asked him. “You said it yourself, that is was… upsetting that she found herself in such a situation.”

“I never said that! I couldn’t care less,” he hissed.

“Oh, but you do care, and she was so nice to us!” the angel pouted. Crowley looked at him from the corner of his eyes and let out a grunt.

“Alright! What do you suggest?!”

“I suggest,” Aziraphale started with a satisfied smile, “that we convert her to Christianity.”

“Bullshit. That’s boring and doomed to failure. Besides, we have to leave this cottage as soon as possible. There’s no time for lame catechesis.”

Aziraphale let out an indignant gasp as Crowley moved to the kitchen to investigate if Elspeth had some more wine. “But your car is not even fixed! How do you suggest that we continue?”

“I’d rather go all the way up to Shetlands walking than stay here imparting catechism to a girl that probably doesn’t even know what a Bible is!”

“She has an extremely beautiful copy of King Jame’s Bible,” Aziraphale said proudly and Crowley gave him a look as he poured some wine on a cup. “You shouldn’t drink her wine without her permission,” the angel frowned and Crowley started drowning the wine, looking in his eyes as he did. What was he going to do? Make the wine become water? Hah! When he finished, he shove the cup aside, breaking it, and started drinking from the bottle directly. “You are upset.”

“I’m not.”

“Why are you upset?”

“I’m telling you, I’m not!”

“Oh, you are impossible!” Aziraphale exclaimed and fixed the cup with a miracle.

“Can you stop doing that?” Crowley hissed in annoyance, going closer to him again.

“Doing what?”

“Being so fucking nice! So unbearably nice that you put yourself in danger! I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to use our powers unless it was extremely necessary during this trip.”

“Well, then don’t go around breaking other people’s property,” he sentenced. “Besides, it would be more suspicious if we didn’t use our powers at all than if we continue making small deeds,” he concluded with a satisfying nod.

“Oh?” Crowley said, feigning surprise. “Then I guess it’s alright if I fix my car and we go the fuck away from here.”

Aziraphale meditated in silence for a while and his face light up again. “We can take her with us!” Crowley gave him a look and took another, long sip of wine, going out of the house from the kitchen door. “Crowley? Crowley!” Aziraphale started following him as he gave long, rushed steps down the garden into the forest.

“You want to take the girl because you want to make up for God being an almighty dick to her? Alright! Go ahead! Take her!!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is it the same thing you did to me?!” he asked, and Aziraphale stopped running. Crowley turned around and started walking towards him, drinking more wine and finally threw the bottle away. “Did you only agree to _fraternise_ with me out of pity?”

“I won’t have this conversation with you while you are still drunk,” Aziraphale stated, giving him a hurt look. Crowley let out a grunt and started sobering up, Aziraphale looking away. When he finished, Crowley gave him an expectant look, wanting him to reply to what he had just asked although his sober state made him quite embarrassed on his previous statement. Nothing he would ever admit, though. “Do you really think so?” Aziraphale finally broke the silence, giving him a few shy and sad glances.

Crowley stubbornly shrugged with an indifferent expression. “Isn’t that what you angels do? Be too… extremely nice?”

“Our relationship has always been genuine,” Aziraphale continued, glancing downwards. “At least from my part.”

He let out a grunt. “You always point out how demons and angels are natural enemies” he made gestures as if separating the two categories. “So…”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale suddenly said, and Crowley stopped gesturing and talking altogether. He looked at him with his mouth wide open. “You’re right,” Aziraphale nodded, “I realised a long time ago you were right when you said there’s only _our_ side, and… maybe I haven’t been able to express it as I felt it.” He gave Crowley an apologetic look.

The demon couldn’t go out of his stupor. The angel was apologising to him for the first time in more than 6000 years. Up until then, he had heard him being thankful, mad, content, happy towards him, but never before had he been sorry for something he had done. It was usually the other way around, although Crowley would only acknowledge it when he desperately wanted or needed something from Aziraphale: it would do the trick.

“You’re sorry,” he stated.

“Well, that’s what I said!” Aziraphale frowned.

Crowley hadn’t felt as confused and warm since the angel had showed up in his car with a bottle of holy water, and he had to admit that he quite enjoyed the feeling (more so now that the deed wouldn’t imply in one way or another the risk of the irremediable effacing of his presence in the entire universe forever). “W-well… thank you.”

Aziraphale nodded and gave him a polite smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Should we…?”

They both started heading back to the cottage. “I hope you won’t make a fuss tomorrow when I suggest Elspeth to join us on our trip,” Aziraphale changed the topic of conversation back to its controversial beginning. Crowley let out a groan of exasperation that indicated Aziraphale he had given up.

“Fine, do whatever you want to, involve the _Scottish lass_,” he mimicked the Scottish accent and the angel gave him a bright smile.

“You won’t regret it! It will be fun! You know… the more, the merrier!” Crowley rolled his eyes, but opened the door for him, gesturing him to go inside with a dramatic bow. “Oh. Thank you,” the angel smiled softly and Crowley snorted a laugh.

Next day dawned with Elspeth milking her cow. She wanted to give her guests a nice breakfast just as they woke up: pancakes with wild berries, fresh milk, and a nice cup of tea. Of course, she didn’t know that two of her guests hadn’t slept during the whole night, but spent the entire evening going through her book collection (in the case of Aziraphale) and looking at the music one (in the case of Crowley)

“See? Even the wench likes good ol’ Freddy Mercury. _And _Prince,” Crowley whispered, taking her vinyls from one of the shelves and showing them to him with boastfulness.

“I never said they weren’t good,” Aziraphale raised his look momentarily from a fine edition of Virgil’s _Bucolics_. “Just that they aren’t refined enough for my taste.”

“Oh, no,” Crowley said in the same tone. “Look at this, angel. This may seem refined enough for you,” he stuck out his tongue as he raised a copy of _The Sound of Music_. Aziraphale frowned and looked back to the book as Crowley laughed.

But let’s go back to our girl, who was fulfilling her duties as farmer that morning for her guests. The day was sunny and there was no breeze, so she didn’t need more than a coat over her sleeping gown to do so. She shared her cow with her neighbour Alistair, and she was the most beautiful cow in the county. She had a good temper, too, and would never wander stray, staying always between Elspeth’s and Alistair’s cottage. But the cow wasn’t the only thing Elspeth was proud of. Her hens, too, were beautiful and fat, and she made sure that they stayed safe from her cats. It had been complicated building the chicken-run for them, and she had almost had a fatal incident at least three times during the affair, but Alistair had helped her. As a way to thank him, she had offered to share the cow as long as he behaved nicely with her.

And the cow was almost like a sister to Elspeth. This cow was none other than the daughter of Beth, who belonged to Elspeth’s mother, Margaret. Similarly, Beth’s mother was the cow of Elspeth’s grandma, and so on, and so this cow belonged to a generation of calves that had belonged to her family ever since the Romans tried to conquer Scotland. In fact, Aziraphale and Crowley had been lucky enough to meet both Elspeth and her cow’s ancestors many years ago.

“Ave Cesar,” Aziraphale had said to the woman, who was milking her cow on a fine morning, pretty much as Elspeth was now. Her ancestor didn’t even look up as she was paying attention to the apple of her eye. “Woman, I am afraid you are sitting right on the door of the Antonine wall. You must move, eh, 50 feet to continue with your business. Now.”

The woman and the cow looked at him with indifference and as the animal let out a moo, Elspeth’s ancestor stained his brand new sandals with milk. Aziraphale moved back with a gasp and was about to speak up in a rather exacerbated tone when Crowley appeared from the forest behind the woman, in the Scottish part of the wall.

“Crowley,” the angel called him with a happy smile.

“A wish a lad would look at me the way that Roman looked at that fellow,” Elspeth’s ancestor told her cow.

“Aziraphale! What are you doing on this side of the wall?”

“That woman is milking the cow at the entrance!” he explained, walking towards him in an annoyed manner. “And she milked on my sandals! They were made of the finest leather in the entire Empire!”

Crowley looked at the sandals and let out a pout. “Ow, I’m sure they’ll wash away rather fast if they were of such a good material,” he said, making the stain disappear and Aziraphale smiled and let out an “oh” of content and gratefulness. “Let me talk to that woman, will you?”

He walked in front of her and Aziraphale stared at the pair with a look of regret, afraid of what Crowley could do to the Scot and her cow, but ultimately letting him do his business with her. He kneeled in front of her and the woman frowned.

“Now, if this isn’t a fine cow,” he said, patting her side a bit too strongly and making the cow moo, upset. The woman gave him a look. “It would be a pity if something were to happen to her, wouldn’t it?”

“Stay away from ma cow, ye bastard.”

“No. _You_ stay away from the wall. Understood?” Crowley smiled menacingly and the woman stood up. She didn’t understand how a Scot could be working with a Roman, but she didn’t like it in the slightest. Nevertheless, she took her bucket and her cow and walked past him and Aziraphale into the forest.

“Ye’re a traitor to yer people!” she exclaimed at Crowley, making him frown.

“If you knew who my people are…” he whispered. Aziraphale looked at the scene, the demon’s mood making even him upset, and so he spoke up to make the woman go away faster.

“Leave at once, woman, or… or…” he had to think of something, something menacing. For once, he was going to play the bad police. “Or God will turn His face from you and your lineage forever!”

The woman made a rude gesture. She would always raise her family to venerate the pagan gods anyway. Crowley approached Aziraphale with a raised eyebrow and an amused smile as he hesitantly stared at the woman leave.

“Maybe I should take that back,” he said with a worried expression. “I don’t actually _mean_ it.”

“Nah, just an empty threat, no real harm in it,” he shrugged. “Just let it be. Otherwise you would only extend the conversation unnecessarily. What would you say to some lunch instead?” he suggested.

“With those clothes you wouldn’t be able to close the wall!” Aziraphale replied, although he was looking forwards to a lunch with his frie… acquaintance. With a gesture, Crowley’s attire transformed into Roman robes. “I would be delighted,” Aziraphale smiled and both of them crossed the wall.

Of course, Elspeth didn’t find anyone to threaten or damn her as she was milking her cow, for she always made sure to do so in a place where she would disturb no one. Besides, it was quite difficult to find a single soul around that place ever since she had moved into the cottage. She made her way back when she filled the bucket with milk, humming a merry song at the thought of her guests drinking it, but just as she arrived there, she tripped on a rock and fell down, milk and all on the floor.

That’s how Adam found her when he went out of the cottage to walk Dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Elspeth" is a variation of the name "Elizabeth," which is the name of the cow of Elspeth's mother. Elspeth was named after her.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my bestie for showing me this series <3
> 
> I'm having so much fun writing this and I hope you like reading it too ^^


End file.
